Abstract

Soon after China started economic and social reform in the late 1970s, a new trade was born an international traffic of policy and practices. It is a two-way traffic. In one direction, scholars and government officials travel from developed countries to China bringing foreign practices based on their latest experience and promoting them, quite often not fully unpacked. In the other direction, people bring raw research materials out of China, expensive statistics or fieldwork materials, which are later processed, analysed and shelved by overseas researchers armed with Western theories and analytical tools. However, the two sides do not necessarily communicate. Catherine Jones Finer tries in this volume to provide a two way exchange of views on social policy reform in China.